James Winters

Looking for something new to integrate into an #evolution or #microbiology course? Useful for lectures, labs, homework?

Have a look at our STEPS program, which simulates bacterial evolution, including the #LTEE. Easy web-based interface & lab manual w/ exercises to help develop students' intuition.

Who here nostalgic for Reader?

Don’t Send A Magician To Do A Scientist’s Job: A New Blog Series About Our Experiments In Teaching Science to Young Scientists — Will Gervais We’re doing some exciting and innovative things with our methods, stats, and skills curriculum and we want to tell y’all about it! Debuting our new bespoke 9-module statistics, methods, and skills cu...

Dusted off the ol' blog after years of heavy disuse because I'm h*ckin' excited to tell y'all about some of the exciting things we're trying in our stats/methods/skills curriculum at Brunel!

Read! Share! Tell us what you think!
#psychscisky 🧪 #philsci #methodology #teaching

We are pleased to announce that the first LEVANTE data release is now publicly available!

To access and download the pilot data, follow instructions on researcher.levante-network.org/data. This data release accompanies the preprint linked in the thread.

In our new preprint, @chrisvonrueden.bsky.social and I argue that "equality" is a red herring. To understand hunter-gatherer political organization, we must focus on process, not outcome.

Got something to contribute? BBS is accepting commentary proposals!

resolve.cambridge.org/core/journal...

1. My new preprint has its own bluesky account. Why? The problems facing social media & scientific publishing are similar: both are dominated by powerful oligopolies. The @atproto.com tech underlying bluesky that aims to solve the social media prob might also help solve the scientific pub prob 🧪 🧵

Simulation-based inference with deep learning suggests speed climbers combine innovation and copying to improve performance Abstract. In the Olympic sport of speed climbing, athletes compete to reach the top of a 15 m wall as quickly as possible. Since the standardization of the

Proc B with @sampassmore.bsky.social! We used simulations to explore the innovation strategies of speed climbers 🧗‍♀️ Innovation is higher among slower athletes and lower when the population size is larger, and the overall balance of innovation and copying appears to be suboptimal 🔗 bit.ly/499QjZM

Consensus, cooperation and collective intelligence in foraging societies | Hunter Gatherer Research Consensus-based collective decision-making is a common feature of political life in hunter-gatherer (forager) societies. In this paper, we ask why. Synthesising evidence from anthropology and experimental social psychology, we argue that consensus-based ...

New article in Hunter Gatherer Research!

Foraging societies practice consensus-based politics. We conduct a xc review and argue that it helps to boost collective intelligence.

Consensus, cooperation and collective intelligence in foraging societies
liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/...

Happy new year! I wanted to share my new Python package called chatter that streamlines the process of applying AI/ML models to animal communication 🦜🦇🐋🐵👨‍🌾 masonyoungblood.github.io/chatter/

Part II: Why agent-based modeling could happen in economics. Eventually. Three years ago I ruminated on why agent-based modeling never got any real traction in economics. It got a suprising amount of attention and I continue to receive emails about it to this day. I too…

"Why agent-based modeling could happen in economics. Eventually." Good piece by @mikemakowsky.bsky.social
economistwritingeveryday.com/2025/12/29/p...

I'd argue that the "new era of theory" is already underway, though, led not by economists, but by comp social sci/cultural evolution folks.

My co-authors and I are happy to present our framework "Collective Intelligence as Collective Information Processing (CIP)."

Here we propose decomposing different information processing mechanisms to unify disparate phenomena traditionally classified as "collective intelligence."

Subjective functions Where do objective functions come from? How do we select what goals to pursue? Human intelligence is adept at synthesizing new objective functions on the fly. How does this work, and can we endow arti...

Goal selection through the lens of subjective functions:
arxiv.org/abs/2512.15948
I welcome any feedback on these preliminary ideas.

STbayes: An R package for creating, fitting and understanding Bayesian models of social transmission A critical consequence of joining social groups is the possibility of social transmission of information related to novel behaviours or resources. Network-based diffusion analysis (NBDA) has emerg...

🎉🍾 very excited to see this out before 2025 ends doi.org/10.1111/2041... with Will Hoppitt in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social. This paper is an overview of our new R package STbayes, a user-friendly toolkit for performing Bayesian NBDA analyses. @cbehav.bsky.social @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social

Massive congrats Oleg! Can't wait to see the research group up and running 🎉

YouTube video by The British Academy The 21st Century Resurgence of Eugenics

1/ In a recent @britishacademy.bsky.social video @rebeccasear.bsky.social from @brunelpsy.bsky.social takes a clear-eyed look at the 21st‑century rise of eugenics - an ideology that should have been left behind, yet is now re‑emerging in a number of troubling ways ⚠️🧬 🧪

Watch the full talk here 🎥👇

YouTube video by Evolutionary Psychology (The Podcast) Reasoning and Epistemic Vigilance with Hugo Mercier

This week, we talk to @hugoreasoning.bsky.social about all things "epistemic". Are we gullible and prone to misinformation? Are we vigilant in favor of our interests? Enjoy the wide-ranging conversation!
www.podbean.com/eas/pb-wphps...
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...
youtu.be/nf42LNg6y-A

𝗕𝗲𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗱 𝗻𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀: 𝗧𝗼𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗮𝗱𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗯𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘁𝘆
Discusses how more standard network models miss key points of brain complexity. And some more radical points at the end.
Wrote paper having in mind younger researchers more open to new ideas :-)
#neuroskyence
doi.org/10.1016/j.pl...

YouTube video by CUDANLab Oleg Sobchuk: Evolution of Literature and the Arts.

Oleg Sobchuk @sobchuk.bsky.social
@cudanlab.bsky.social
"Evolution of Literature and the Arts."
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLnZ...

This will be screened, along with a Q and A with the director and Hrdy herself, at the 2026 HBES meeting at UM6P in Rabat! Deadline for applying: January 15th @hbes2026.bsky.social

A general signalling theory: why honest signals are explained by trade-offs rather than costs or handicaps Abstract. Honest signals have long posed a challenge for evolutionary biologists to explain. Here we propose a general Darwinian theory of signalling, Sign

God bless Szamado.

He's completely correct and has been soldiering away at this for years - but the complexity of the topic is just slightly too high to outcompete Zahavi's (misleading) golf analogy.

academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...

How experience shapes extraordinary beliefs The ubiquity of extraordinary beliefs across human societies, such as conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and supernatural beliefs, is a long-standing…

In a new Review for @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social -- and my first first-authored paper! -- @manvir.bsky.social and I argue that experience shapes the emergence and evolution of seemingly extraordinary beliefs.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

On a roll with papers this week. PNAS paper with @michealdebarra.bsky.social giving some evidence to the idea that people turn to the supernatural because of uncertainty about causal processes. BONUS of curing whooping cough with donkeys and warts with snails 🐌

📣 Very happy to announce a new BBS target article with Nick Chater in which we propose a new theory of cultural evolution, highlighting the importance of bottom-up social interaction in explaining the emergence of cultural complexity
🧵 1/8

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Belief as explanation: a motivation-based theory of agency and anthropomorphism in religious belief Supernatural agent beliefs are ubiquitous across cultures, yet many theories aimed at explaining this fact have not held up to scrutiny. The most famous of these, the Hyperactive Agency Detection D...

1/ 🎙️ New paper by Dr Aiyana Willard argues it’s time to retire HADD = “we’re hardwired to see agents EVERYWHERE” and replace it with something that *actually* fits the evidence 🪦➡️📚

@brunelpsy.bsky.social

🔗 Read it 👇

YouTube video by Gender Diversity Across Cultures Testing Biological Evolutionary Patterns Amongst Muxes: A Chat with Dr. Francisco Gómez Jiménez

🧵 1/ Excited to share this work from CCEs Francisco Gómez Jiménez, whose research explores gender diversity across cultures 🌍

Francisco introduces the muxes of the Istmo Zapotec community in Oaxaca, Mexico - a remarkable example of longstanding, culturally grounded gender diversity 🏳️‍🌈
🎥👇

Wow! I have to say that this is where the @elife.bsky.social model really shines. Super interesting paper that makes a very strong claim. Reviewers feel interpretation goes beyond what the results show. Paper published with both sides. We all benefit much more than just a publish or reject. Bravo!

Only 4 days left!

The deadline has been extended - there is still time to get your abstracts in to join us in Morocco!

The submission deadline for #CESRabat has been extended to 30 November

@ces2026.bsky.social @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social

🚨Only 2 days left to apply